


Vain Empires

by ClementineStarling



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling/pseuds/ClementineStarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.</i><br/>Miranda muses about her life in exile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vain Empires

**Author's Note:**

> Plot what plot? This is an introspective wall of text! :P
> 
> contains: religious motifs, references to femdom, pretentious quotes and some bashing of Pastor Lambrick.

The fly is buzzing about her head, circle after circle, round after round, as though determined to drive her mad. Whenever the tiresome noise stops for a moment, Miranda can be certain the wretched insect has landed somewhere on her body, most likely on a spot of bare skin, delighting in the deliciousness of her sweat. The tickle of its tiny legs makes her skin itch and she is swift to swat it away, which achieves nothing but the fly's return to its previous activity. One would assume that almost a decade should be enough to get used to all the bugs and vermin of the tropical climate, yet somehow Miranda still finds them vexing. Since she is attending Sunday mass at the time the pestilent fly has chosen to torment her, she imagines it to be an envoy of Beelzebub himself, some devilish fiend come to test her patience and add to the ordeal that is Pastor Lambrick's service. 

And an ordeal it is! The man simply isn't made to preach. What pathetic words he finds to express the glory of the Lord are hardly the kind of spiritual sustenance people would need to thrive on this god-forsaken island. On the contrary, instead of inspiring religious zeal the sermon nips all piety in the bud. It's no secret the mind takes to wander when left idle and impure thoughts make for the best entertainment. There is a turning point of good intention when the all-too-pious motive gives rise to the devil's work, and Lambrick with his dire lack of rhetoric talent is doing his best to reach that apex and plunge the members of his congregation into the most sinful imagination their brains can muster. Miranda sees it clearly in their dreamy expressions. And who could blame them?

Religion demands worship, and worship without a touch of sensuality rarely kindles any passion in a flock of believers. (Or perhaps not the sort that should be encouraged.) The Catholic know that, with all their pagan residue and gold ornaments, with their pretty paintings and graphic depictions of Christ's body writhing on the cross. Miranda, however thinks of quite another carpenter's son during the quiet of prayers. She is as starved for his flesh as she is thirsty for his blood, eager for its passionate thrum against the tips of her fingers. It's been too long that she felt him quivering under her hands, all that barely restrained power, submitting to none in the world but her. 

It is a heady sensation, and the feeling of him inside her carries much more reverence for life and the magnificence of creation than any gathering in a miserable shack like Lambrick's make-shift church ever could. Not even a service held in the splendour of St. Paul's – the great London cathedral she hasn't seen completed, and most likely never will – could compare to the wonders of the body, the metaphysical revelation of the sexual act, this truest expression of the human nature, where spirit and body are united in the experience of divine bliss. _Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?_

Now, having to seek refuge from the tedium of Lambrick's sermon in the safe haven of her own imagination, Miranda already regrets the decision of coming to church at all. There is no solace to be found here, no comfort, no kindred spirits. It just emphasises the utter loneliness of her existence. Sometimes solitude might be the best society, but after years and years spent in her own company she can't bear it anymore. The silence has become a prison, the desolation her punishment. However hard she tries, she can't compel her mind to make a heaven of this hell. Being a castaway at the end of the world, confined to the stifling walls of a small cottage was certainly not how she imagined her life to turn out. She is a creature of society and if she doesn't get company every once in a while, she'll succumb to madness, she is quite sure of it. There are moments late at night, when she can already feel it, simmering inside her. That's the true (and only) reason she decided to attend mass. It's not that she has a lot of options when it comes to social events.

Miranda never considered herself particularly religious. A philosopher is at heart a theologian too and thus not dependent on the interpretation of others. She chose to believe in reason and love rather than pay attention to the miserable affair priests usually make of God's word. In England the church was an institution though, as fundamental as law and crown, no one questioned it but for the purity of its teachings. But here – just like tradition, order and royalist attitudes – it does feel alien, the Christian faith, inadequate to an island that strives for freedom, like a burden one longs to shed, shackles that need to be broken. Perhaps it isn't Lambrick's fault that he can't make his sermon work. Perhaps Christianity isn't meant to rule in New Providence.

 _No one_ is meant to rule in New Providence, Miranda thinks. It ought to be paradise, utopia, the no-place that still has come into being, where everyone is free. Where shame is unknown. The New World is a gift, Thomas said, a sacred opportunity to right our wrongs and begin anew. Miranda remembers the passion with which he spoke about such matters and it still, after all these years, hurts to think of him. She's never stopped loving him, for how could she? He is a part of her after all. As much as she was part of him. 

Though while she misses Thomas - misses him dearly, desperately - as time passes she finds there are other things she longs for too, perhaps even more than the company of her beloved husband. She tries not to be ashamed that she craves for the comforts and achievements of civilisation: music, art, conversation, books, science, the theatre. Maybe the chance to play a part in the greater scheme of things, to wield influence, to be heard when she raises her voice. 

But to achieve this, she needs a man who can lift her up to society's stage, into the limelight, a companion who magnifies her voice through his appreciation. A gentleman, Miranda has learned, only listens to what a lady has to say when she speaks on behalf of her husband and proclaims his beliefs as her own. There is no such thing as a woman allowed to express her thoughts without the approval of a man, save for, perhaps, a queen. The world's been like that for a long time and Miranda, despite all her wits and education, never found herself able to change a thing about it. It was Thomas' position that lent her authority, the hand in the small of her back that allowed her to share her opinion with a greater audience, his presence in her bed that made her Lady Hamilton.

Now without Thomas, what can she hope to be in the eyes of the public? A hermit, a sinner, a witch? The paramour of a pirate captain? It's a position that holds little sway. The people of New Providence think she's his hostage at best, his whore at the worst. None of these Englishmen who themselves have so completely and utterly abandoned the rules and customs of the society they came from – for what would be less Christian than to hunt fellow humans like animals and keep them like cattle? – seems able to overlook her questionable reputation, much less forgive her assumed trespasses. Her opinion carries no weight here, and not least because they don't have a concept of ladies in the New World. 

Women are more of a commodity than a treasure here, defined by their usefulness, their roles as wives and mothers rather than valued as a representation of beauty, of love, of the divine within the human. The admiration the inhabitants of Providence Island have for women, if any, appears restricted to barely concealed lust, and even their desire bears no semblance to the finesse and sophistication Miranda is used to. They are ignorant of the art of seduction, the subtleties of courting, the small triumphs and delightful victories. How would she convey to these peasants the elation a gentleman might experience at being allowed to kiss her hand for the first time? How would they understand his euphoria at her permission to brush his lips against the tender inside of her wrist, where the pulse beats feverishly beneath delicate skin? It is a favour that has to be earned, anticipated to unfold its full effect.

They know nothing of this here at the end of the world. They would not understand the magnificence of kneeling before her, suckling at the tips of her fingers, revelling in the privilege of tasting the sugar of pastries, the juice of fruit she's just eaten straight off her skin. They have no idea how delightful longing can be, how exhilarating to dream of savouring the sweetness of her lips, her tongue, to lick into her mouth and seek out forbidden pleasure. No, these farmers and fishers, sugar planters and slave owners wouldn't comprehend the refined pleasure of submitting to a lady's will. 

Miranda lets her thoughts travel back to this glorious past, pictures the lovers who, quite literally, lay at her feet. She never interrupted their conversation during their worship of her but continued to discuss political issues and theories of science, spoke of philosophy and art. And what a pleasure it was to see her suitors struggle to keep up with her brilliance when all they wanted was to forget their good manners and their proper upbringing, forgo all restraint, just rut against her leg like a mindless animal. If she felt gracious she allowed them to kiss her feet, the delicate toes, the slender ankles, the graceful swell of her calves. Oh, how they yearned for the white, soft skin of her thighs, the even softer flesh of her cunt, how they ached to kiss her with fervour, there, in the most intimate of places, be drunk on her lust. 

Thomas used to delight in the stories of her adventures, he loved to ear about all the conquests and acquisitions and here and there he took part in them too. Though it was not until they met Lieutenant McGraw of the Royal Navy that they were both equally enamoured. He was meant to be their greatest prize, the completion of their collection, the one man they loved and cherished like no other, and yet he had been their downfall. They thought themselves invincible and pride goes before a fall.

What a different life it was, Miranda ponders while studying the calluses on her palms, the cuts on her fingers, the stubborn remains of soil under her nails. Thomas promised her to be his queen in a land of reason, but despite James' efforts to make his dream come true, this state still remains a fancy, clouded in the mists of a distant future. Her realm is but a small house, and the empire she built is formed from dirt by means of her own two hands. She works the garden, ploughs a little field, sows and reaps, cooks and cleans. The blood upon her hands is from the slaughter of poultry, not the battle against their enemies.

New Providence Island already had its queen when Miranda set foot on its shore, a teen-aged girl with a firm grasp on commerce, and Miranda doesn't envy her the position. She's never wanted to be a businesswoman, never planned to take up arms. If anything she sees herself as a politician. But what is a politician without their social circles? So what remains is to serve as a reminder. While Miranda makes a home and acts the part of the harmless puritan woman with a fondness for books and playing the harpsichord, others fight for a free Nassau, bleed and suffer for a dying dream. A new world to deserve the name.

Outside the small church the trees sway softly in the wind. There is not a cloud in the sky on this fine Sunday morning, a bright blue canopy is stretching far and wide over this paradise. Just a few miles away the population of Nassau worships God in their own ways, with wine and fucking, and Miranda wonders if she doesn't rather belong with them than with Lambrick's flock. 

To belong, well, what a presumptuous wish! Miranda hasn't belonged for a long time. Not since Thomas. Thomas who was the world to her, the sun of her existence. She used to imagine them growing old together. Sitting in front of the fireplace to keep the chills of age at bay, their ink-stained fingers turning pages of books with the ever-same fervour, though maybe less steady. Sometimes she thinks about these rainy English evenings of a future that will never come to pass and her heart grows heavy with longing. Fate has denied her this happiness. Thomas is dead in the ground, buried in cold English soil, and she is here, in a strange land, an outcast sentenced to a life of constant uncertainty. 

There was a time though, in the wake of their loss, that for a while she had found a new kind of belonging. When they set out from England, she was a partner to James McGraw, an equal, and perhaps more so than society had ever allowed her to be Thomas' equal. They were united in their wrath, joined in their sorrow, and from these feelings they fashioned their new selves. Defiance became the breeding ground of their new personae. With Thomas gone, all light had been razed from the world, and they embraced this darkness. When Lambrick speaks of Genesis, Miranda knows only too well what it means. She has created the world like that once.

_In the beginning the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters._  
_And God said, Let there be light: and there was light._  
_And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness._  
_And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day._

She remembers the weeks at sea, the darkness of the water against the darkness of the sky. They were lost on that ocean of grief but one day the sun came up over the horizon. And on that first morning from the darkness of their shared suffering James Flint was born. She poured all of her passion into him, her anger, her will, her own hardness. She shaped him from cruelty and vengeance, and the name he chose for himself was perfect. He was meant to resist England's blade and strike the spark to burn down an empire so in its place a new world could emerge.

But fire once kindled is hard to control, and after a decade of incendiarism Miranda begins to fear they will just drown in a sea of flames, their intentions burnt beyond all recognition, their ideas crumbled to ash, without ever having reached the goal they set out to achieve. She tries her best to be like a cliff, stand firm and tame the fury of the water, remind James of who they once were, anchor him to their ideas and beliefs, but she can feel him slipping from her grasp, inch by inch, bit by bit with every passing year. 

Captain Flint has long since ceased being merely a tale, spun to instil terror in the hearts of their enemies, he has begun to develop a life of his own, a monster wearing James' skin, and there are times she doesn't recognise the man anymore, nor their agenda. _The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts._ Sometimes Miranda fears she has lost him already, and what for? The world they dreamed up once has not yet been conjured into existence, far from it. Whatever James claims or hopes, it's not likely to rise from the ashes of the past soon, though until it is, she appears condemned to haunt its ruins, to dwell in that non-place between what was and what once might be, like the memory of a long-dead fancy. This isn't living. This is not life.

The fly has once again resumed its nerve-racking circle around Miranda's head, as if to remind her that New Providence is quite the opposite of Eden, and that maybe it would yet be better to serve in heaven than to reign in hell. There must be a way, however long and hard, leading back to the light of civilisation. Thomas would not want them to perish in pursuit of a foolish, unachievable dream of freedom. Thomas would remind her, to _look to nothing, not even for a moment, except to reason._

It's what she'll think of when she takes up the quill and starts to write her letter to the honourable Justice Addington Thomas, Massachusetts Bay colony. It's the right, the reasonable thing to do.


End file.
